Monitoring and Measurement in ISO 45001

An organization faces many health and safety related issues despite planning and establishing various systems in place to ensure that all health and safety related requirements are addressed. Issues like more than expected health complaints, incidents resulting in serious injuries, absenteeism impacting work and deliveries to customers and many other such problems are a cause of concern to the organization at some point of time. These issues result in low worker satisfaction or motivation and may impact deliveries to customers resulting in lower customer satisfaction. It is important for an organization to keep a track of all such cases. To do this an organization needs to monitor, measure, analyze and evaluate processes to ensure that these are effective, adequate and suitable. ISO 45001 talks about this in the clause on Performance Evaluation.

Measurement and Monitoring Requirements

Measurement and monitoring requirements should be decided on the basis of risk and criticality of the process. The measurements should be in line with OH&S objectives established for the organization. The measurement and monitoring requirements should consider requirements of the standard, legal requirements and other requirements. Some examples can be:

• observation of health of employees, work environment monitoring;

• progress on policy declarations, objective achievement, and continual improvement;

• competence levels of the workers
• gaps in compliance with legal requirements, if any
• Standards and Codes;
• Insurance Requirements

Once you have identified your measurement and monitoring requirements, you need to establish systems to collect and consolidate these measures. To do this, you need to define criteria to compare these measurements. These criteria could be against industry benchmarks or organization’s own codes and objectives. Establish measurement devices or tools that would be required to take these measurements. Along with methods to collect and consolidation, establish methods to check that the results of measurements are valid.

Analysis and Evaluation

Analysis is the process of investigating data to determine relationships and trends. You may use various statistical tools like Pareto analysis, fish-bone analysis, 5-why analysis, etc. to draw a conclusion from data.

Evaluation is done to ensure adequacy, suitability and effectiveness of health and safety requirements. This activity is most often related to monitoring activities. Occupational health complaints, work environment monitoring and health surveillance of workers are some of the elements that need to be monitored in an organization.

The results of analysis and evaluation shall be used to take actions to eliminate root causes which are the reason for negative feedback or measurement going beyond the targets established.

Present the trend analysis in Management review meetings and Identify the need for improvements within the OH&S management system through evaluation of these processes.

Analysis and Evaluation of data may specify a number of areas of concerns or risks. Adequate actions should be taken pro-actively to ensure these risks or problems are adequately addressed before they reach severe levels and are difficult to con

ISO Terms Explained

To the novice quality manager, ISO jargon can be extremely overwhelming. What is an NCR? What do you mean by OFI? Are we certified or accredited? But before you go and pull out your hair, let’s take a moment to go over some of the most frequently used terms and their definitions with regards to ISO and Management System Certification.